I woke again about eight to whispers and giggles, and lifted my head to look around. Lester was sound asleep on the couch, his mouth agape, snoring peacefully, but Pamela and Jill were slowly, delicately propping Q-tips at odd angles in his thick brown hair.
Other kids began to stir, and when they saw what Jill and Pamela were up to, they began to giggle. Jennifer took some dental floss out of her overnight bag, and Jill unwound it and wrapped it around the Q-tips, draping it from stick to stick, turning her head away so she wouldn’t breathe or giggle in Lester’s face. It looked sort of like a crown. Pamela went out to the kitchen and returned with a sheet of foil. She tore off little pieces and carefully squeezed them over the ends of each Q-tip so that they looked like silver. Both Patrick and I were each sitting up on one elbow now, laughing silently. Karen took a Polaroid picture.
Les gave a sigh and opened his mouth even wider. Penny got in the act and stuck one finger in his mouth. Then she turned to the other kids, most of whom were awake now, all but Donald Sheavers, and mimed that she was going to stick two fingers in without touching the sides of Lester’s mouth. Lester snored on. Penny’s dimples grew even deeper as she indicated three fingers and gently guided them in without waking Lester. Somebody clapped. This time Penny held up four fingers, but at that moment Lester’s mouth snapped shut, and then his eyes opened. He gave a snort, and Penny sat back on her heels.
“Wha’sup?” Lester said groggily. He saw Pamela and Jill and Jennifer all looking at him and laughing. Les swung his legs off the couch and looked around. As he did so, one of the Q-tips slipped and dangled over his eyes. “What the … ?” Lester cried, running his hand over his hair. Then he leaped up. “Oh, for crying out loud,” he said as the crown fell off, and everyone laughed.
Dad stepped in from the kitchen. “Anybody for waffles and sausage?” he said.
“They’re all yours, Dad. I’m outta here,” Les said, bolting up the stairs with his blanket and pillow.
Some of the girls went upstairs to shower, two and three crowding into the bathtub at once to save time, a couple of guys went back to sleep, but by ten, half of us had eaten Dad’s waffles and the other half were getting dressed. A few kids, Patrick included, had already gone home, and the rest drifted away, one by one, most of them telling me that they’d had a really great time, and I knew they meant it. You can just tell.
When the last person had gone, I went out in the kitchen to help with the dishes. Dad looked at me. I looked at him.
“Whew!” he said, and we both laughed.
“Thanks, Dad,” I told him. “Everyone had a really great time. And there wasn’t any sex going on, if that’s what you’re going to ask me next.”
“I wasn’t, but I’m glad to hear it,” he said.
I spent the next hour putting the house back in shape, running the vacuum over the rug and the dining room, cleaning the popcorn off the sofa and chairs, rearranging the furniture, carrying more glasses to the kitchen. There were Polaroid pictures all over the top of the piano, and I got myself a glass of orange juice and sat down on the sofa to enjoy them.
There was a photo of Brian eating a piece of pizza; Elizabeth carrying the birthday cake; Lori and Mark and Jill and Justin playing cards; Gwen and Legs watching the movie; me with my mouth open, eating popcorn; Lester holding up a pair of boxer shorts; Lester on the couch with Q-tips in his hair, and then … I suddenly felt like a block of ice without any heartbeat at all. Because there in my hand was a picture of Patrick and Penny with their arms around each other, kissing.
5
That Sinking Feeling
I couldn’t breathe for a moment, and then I sank down on the couch, not taking my eyes from the picture.
On this couch, this very couch where I was sitting, Penny and Patrick were turned toward each other in the photo. She had one hand on his shoulder, he had a hand on her waist, and their faces were turned at an angle so you could see most of the back of Patrick’s head and one side of Penny’s face.
How could they? How could he?
My eyes were brimming over, and tears spilled down my cheeks. I felt humiliated, angry, and lost. How could they do this in my very own house? Here at my party? Why had Karen taken their picture? And then I remembered when I’d walked in the living room once and heard someone whisper, “There’s Alice,” as though a secret was traveling around the place. Everyone was in on it but me.
I leaned back against the sofa cushions, covered my face with my hands, and sobbed. Maybe Karen had left it behind just so I’d find out. Maybe Patrick had been seeing Penny for weeks and no one had the nerve to tell me.
The phone rang, but I didn’t want to answer. Lester was still sleeping, though, and Dad was outside raking leaves. So I got up, swallowed, and walked to the phone in the hall.
“Hello?” I said, but it didn’t sound like me.
There was a pause.
“Al?” Pamela’s starting to mimic Lester now, calling me “Al.”
“Yeah? What do you want?” I said hoarsely.
“My gosh, it doesn’t sound like you at all. I think I left my sweater at your place. I’m on my way over to pick it up, okay?”
“All right.”
Another pause. “You sound like you’ve been crying.”
I swallowed again.
“Alice, have you been crying?” she asked.
“Pamela!” I bawled. I couldn’t hold back any longer.
“What’s the matter? What’s happened?” And then, before I could say anything, she said, “You saw the picture, I’ll bet.”
Everybody knew, then! Everyone was waiting. All the kids knew that Patrick was falling for Penny, and no one knew how to tell me, least of all Patrick.
“I’ll be right over,” Pamela said, and hung up.
I sat down on the stairs, too weak to do anything else. Yesterday had been so wonderful. I’d felt attractive and popular and clever and fun. Now I felt like old news, yesterday’s leftovers. I felt tricked and pitied.
I knew I should go wash my face before Pamela got here, but I couldn’t even make myself do that. Now that she said she was coming, I wanted her to hurry and get here. I wanted to know how long she’d known Patrick was cheating on me and how many of the other kids knew.
When her footsteps sounded on the porch, I heard voices and realized that Elizabeth was with her. They’d come together to let me know that Patrick was breaking up with me, to be with me in my time of need. I didn’t want to be pitied. I didn’t want to be sad. Yet here I was, and the minute I opened the door, I started crying again.
Instantly Elizabeth put her arms around me, but Pamela was saying, “Al, it was a joke! That’s all it was, just a joke.”
“Well, if th-that was a joke, I don’t get it,” I sobbed. “How long have you known something was going on?”
“I didn’t know anything until Pamela came over and got me and said you were upset about a picture,” said Elizabeth. “What picture?”
We were an odd-looking lot. Elizabeth had obviously just gotten home from Mass, because she was wearing a dark green dress. Pamela had changed to shorts, even though it was only sixty degrees out, and I was still dressed in the clothes I’d worn yesterday. Wordlessly I led them into the living room and handed Elizabeth the photo.
She stared at it, then at Pamela. “Where was I when they took this picture?” she asked.
“I don’t know. You and Alice were off in the kitchen somewhere, and Karen was just being … well, Karen. She was telling us how you could make pictures lie so it looked like something was happening that wasn’t, and she’d seen someone take a picture at a party where it looked like a couple was kissing when they weren’t, and Penny said, ‘Let’s try it!’ and chose Patrick. It was supposed to be a joke, Alice!”
Pamela was calling me Alice again, so I knew she was serious. But the words “chose Patrick” rang in my ears. Why not Mark or Brian or Donald or Justin? Why did she choose a guy who was actually going with someone? And then, the
question that hurt even more, why had Patrick agreed to do it?
“Look!” Pamela explained. “They weren’t even touching. I helped arrange them.”
“You?” I cried.
Pamela looked chagrined. “Well, if they’re going to do it, wouldn’t you rather have one of your friends calling the shots to be sure it’s legit? We had them arranged so that their lips were two inches apart, their hands weren’t touching each other, but from across the room, in the camera, it looked like a real kiss.”
“That’s a scream,” I wept. “I never saw anything so funny in my life.”
“Forgive and forget,” Elizabeth said quickly, trying to be helpful.
When Pamela went upstairs to get her sweater, Elizabeth said, “Patrick probably couldn’t help himself. All the guys are nuts about Penny. It’s just hormones, that’s all it is.”
That was supposed to make me feel better?
When Pamela came back down, we went out to sit in the sunshine on the front steps. We could hear the quiet scrape, scrape of Dad’s rake at the side of the house.
“This was supposed to be a beautiful September,” I said ruefully. “I wanted it to be an autumn I’d always remember—my first year of high school. I’ll remember it, all right.”
“Seventy times seven,” said Elizabeth.
“What? What are we doing now, the multiplication tables?”
“That’s how many times you’re supposed to forgive someone.”
“Great!” I said. “Patrick gets to kiss her four hundred and ninety times more.” I guess I’m pretty good at arithmetic when it’s important.
“He didn’t kiss her!” Pamela insisted.
No, he hadn’t kissed her, but he’d been two inches away from her lips, I thought. He had smelled the scent of her hair, looked into her eyes… . If he hadn’t kissed her, I’ll bet he’d wanted to. I leaned back on my elbows. “She’s like a magnet,” I said. “What is it about small, petite girls, anyway? The boys go crazy over them, and it makes the rest of us feel like elephants.”
“I don’t feel like an elephant. You’re exaggerating,” said Pamela. “And you have to admit she’s a lot of fun. You’d better take it as a joke, Al, because everyone else is.”
“I know. I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. I guess I just wanted it to be the perfect party, and this was the part that wasn’t so perfect,” I said.
“I’ve got to go have lunch,” said Elizabeth. “I’ll see you later, guys.”
We watched her cross the street.
“I have to go, too,” said Pamela. “Dad’s taking me to an Orioles game.”
I glanced over at her. “Sounds like you’re getting along better!”
“We’re making ‘a conscious effort,’ as Dad puts it. Anyway, it’ll get me out of the house when Mom calls. She always calls on Sunday afternoons, and I don’t much feel like talking to her. Then I’ve got a ton of homework to do.”
“Me, too,” I told her. I’d thought the homework in junior high was awful, but it was nothing like what they give you in high school.
I sat on the porch awhile longer and let the sun warm my legs as Pamela went back down the block. Finally I heard Lester in the kitchen, making something gross in the blender, so I went back inside. He was pouring some kind of skim milk/banana/oatmeal mixture into a glass, and he seemed only half awake.
“Shut up,” he said, before I even opened my mouth.
“Happy birthday, dear Les-ter … ,” I warbled off-key.
“Oh, geez, don’t ruin it,” he said.
“I just wanted you to know that Dad and I are taking you out to dinner tonight, and as my present to you, I’m doing all the dishes this week, even though you’re on kitchen duty.”
That perked him up a little. “My laundry, too?”
“Don’t push it,” I said. I watched him glug down the concoction, then stick an English muffin in the toaster. He was wearing an old pair of boxer shorts with lemons on them, and a ripped T-shirt.
I felt like crying again, but I didn’t. “Lester,” I said. “If there was this girl you had really, really liked for a long time—”
“Don’t start,” he said.
“No, I need to know. And let’s say there was this party and all your friends were there, and it was going on all night, everybody having a good time …”
Lester reached into the fridge and took out the butter carton.
“… and the next morning you found a Polaroid picture somebody had taken of”—I didn’t want to say “kissing” because Lester probably wouldn’t be bothered by a kiss—“of this girl lying naked on the couch with a naked guy on top of her, and—”
“What?” Lester yelled, dropping the butter. “… and you found out it was all trick photography to make them look like they were having sex, but they weren’t, would … ?”
Lester grabbed me by one arm. “Who was it? Pamela? Jill?”
I shook my head. “Nobody.”
“Al, did anyone get naked last night while I was sleeping?”
“No.”
“Did anyone have sex with their clothes on?”
“No.”
“Then will you please get out of my face and let me enjoy my breakfast in peace?”
“Lester, really! I need your advice!” I said, sitting down across from him, and told him about the photo of Patrick and Penny.
“So if it’s all a joke, what’s the big deal?” he asked.
“It hurts, Lester!”
“Maybe so, but the best thing you can do is laugh and forget it.”
“I can’t.”
“Okay, then. Get on the bus tomorrow and claw Patrick’s eyes out. That’ll really endear you to him. C’mon, Al. Snap out of it.”
“I guess you’re right,” I said, and went upstairs.
For a while I managed to put the picture out of my mind, and worked on a paper for history. I went back down around two and ate part of a sandwich Dad had left and some pretzels, but when I started to go up again and saw the sofa where Patrick had been sitting with Penny, where everyone had been whispering, it started the feelings all over again.
I lay for a long time on my bed staring up at the ceiling, at the cobweb that was strung between my light fixture and the wall. It was beginning to collect dust, and looked like a cable on the Brooklyn Bridge. Was Karen trying to start a fight between Patrick and me? I wondered. Was Penny trying to come between us?
I heard the doorbell ring. Lester’s footsteps in the downstairs hall.
“Hey, Al! It’s Patrick,” he called.
Patrick! For a moment I didn’t move. I wouldn’t go down. I couldn’t! Then I realized how weird it would seem if I didn’t. I leaped up and yelled, “Be down in a sec.” I brushed my teeth and put on a little eye makeup so my eyes wouldn’t look puffy, then went downstairs. My smile felt about as false as Jill’s eyelashes or Karen’s fingernails.
“Hi,” I said. Even my voice sounded fake. It sounded as though it came from the tiny chest of a Barbie doll.
“Hi,” said Patrick. “Want to walk over to the school or something? Get some ice cream?”
The school is the elementary school nearby, where our gang still gathers sometimes. We sit on the rubber swings, talking to each other, whirling the swings around, scaring all the little kids away.
“Well, I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m sort of busy. We’re taking Lester out to dinner tonight, and I’ve got all this homework.”
“So have I, but I’ve been at it all morning. Need a break,” he said. A lock of red hair hung down over the left side of Patrick’s forehead, and he seemed to have grown another two inches since the day before. He playfully jiggled my arm. “C’mon. It’ll do you good.”
“Okay,” I said.
We went outside. Dad was still at it, transplanting azalea bushes. He always seemed to be tinkering with the yard or the house since he came back from England. Getting things ready for Miss Summers, of course.
“Going for a walk, Dad,” I
called.
He waved and bent over the azaleas again. Patrick and I started our typical slow walk down the sidewalk, his arm around my waist, but it didn’t seem like old times anymore. Usually I lean against him in an easy, comfortable manner, but this time my body resisted, and I discovered I was walking with my arms folded in front of my chest, as though I were cold.
Patrick looked down at me. “My, aren’t we friendly!” he said.
I managed a smile. “Sorry. Got homework on my mind,” I lied.
“Algebra?”
“That’s later. I haven’t even started it yet.”
“Want me to stick around and help?”
“No, I’ll manage. Lester’s here if I’ve got any questions.”
We walked a little farther. “Great party last night,” Patrick said. “Everyone had a good time.”
“Evidently.” Why is it that even when you know what not to say, you end up saying it?
Patrick gave my waist a little tug. “What’s the matter with you, anyway?”
There was no use in pretending. “I found a photo of you and Penny, Patrick. That’s what’s the matter.”
“Didn’t anyone explain about that picture?” he asked, with not a trace of guilt.
“Well, you certainly didn’t.”
“It was all a pose, Alice! We weren’t even touching! We were just horsing around for laughs.”
“Ho-ho-ho.”
“Karen was going to show it to you, and then you put in another video and I guess we just forgot.”
“And it didn’t occur to you to tell me about it?”
“I forgot about it! Why are you getting so upset?”